Saturday, August 04, 2007

Dunphy reports on OC Register layoffs

From John Dunphy at the Orange County (CA) Register:

Things seem grim at the moment. Newsroom (oops we don't call it that anymore) Content Center morale is a little shaky at the moment. The first of the layoffs was carried out Thursday, ironically a web producer from my staff. Go figure. As we press forward, the strategy is to push all content to the web first and then a dedicated band of souls will take that material and publish a newspaper, a much smaller one I suspect.

The newsroom will take a pretty good hit, the numbers are not exactly known, but all are watching around them. We have lost a features copyeditor, a graphic artist, a Business columnist, a newsroom tech, I will keep you updated. More will happen next week.

Some ancillary publications will be cut back or ended and some of those people will rejoin the newsroom as others leave. There is no guarantee this round of cutbacks will generate the savings needed.

As for me, I guess I'm ok for now. A year ago, I left Business news to take on a sort of hybrid job. I supervise and edit coverage for the newspaper, but I also supervise and produce content for the Sports Web site. I also am charged with motivating the sports staff to embrace the web. Easier said than done.

We are very much into the "user-generated content" form here too. Starting soon there will be an ocmoms web site run mostly by contributing moms and an ochigh web site run mostly by high school contributors.

Best to all,

John Dunphy
Senior Sports Web Editor ocregister.com/sports
Golf and Outdoors Editor
714-796-5021 desk
714-791-1937 cell
jdunphy@ocregister.com

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